Social media has become a widely used recruitment tool in the past decade. Businesses rely on it to reach and attract candidates, while job seekers find it easier to learn about companies and apply for jobs.
Today, 96% of job seekers use social media when looking for jobs. The benefits of social media for recruiting are noteworthy for businesses too – including cutting costs, increasing candidate engagement, and reaching high-quality candidates.
In addition, while traditional recruiting typically requires a ‘middleman,’ social media recruiting allows for a more direct relationship with candidates.
In a nutshell, businesses should focus on social media platforms that their potential candidates use, to promote their employer brand and improve their recruitment and hiring efforts.
Home care businesses, for example, find Facebook and LinkedIn most successful when reaching their ideal candidates. If you are a home care provider competing for caregivers, adding social media recruiting to your hiring strategy can give you a boost and accelerate your hiring process.
Here are 9 ways to use social media in 2023 to improve caregiver recruitment and hiring.
1. Choose the right channels for your brand
Promoting your brand on social media not only helps attract new clients; it can also attract potential hires.
For social media recruiting, home care businesses should create a profile on platforms where their potential candidates are most likely to spend their time.
Each social media platform contains users from different demographics, operates on different algorithms, and has various strengths regarding recruitment. So, choosing the right channels for your brand may seem a little daunting.
Here’s a rundown of the top five social media channels and how you can best use them:
With 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is currently the largest social media platform. You can target people in specific locations that fit certain demographics (including job titles, and interests). Running paid ads to promote your open caregiver roles effectively widens your reach to talent and increases applications. Additionally, you can leverage careers pages and job groups.
Mostly used for white-collar professions, LinkedIn is a professional social network and hiring platform. Nearly 90% of recruiters report that they have successfully hired someone via LinkedIn. A business profile on LinkedIn as a home care business is vital for visibility. However, your ideal caregiver candidate is less likely to spend their time on this social media platform.
Providing similar advertising targeting functions to Facebook, Instagram appeals to a younger audience. Since it’s a visually-driven social media platform, creative businesses use it more widely as part of a social recruiting strategy.
Users are less likely to use Twitter to find jobs. Still, you can reach out to Twitter accounts that only advertise industry-specific job postings that will redirect your potential candidates to your website.
TikTok
If you’re looking to hire younger people, Tiktok is worth consideration. TikTok is a quickly growing social media platform that receives high engagement and allows new profiles to shine just as easily as the more established. Plus, most young people have started using it as a new search engine.
If you’re just starting to use social media as part of your recruitment strategy, choose one or two platforms that attract the talent you want to recruit and master those first.
2. Have a visible employer brand on social media channels
Once you’ve chosen the right social media channels for your caregiver hiring strategy, you’ll need to showcase your employer brand to attract potential candidates.
You can develop a positive employer brand by using a strong content strategy that highlights your company’s culture, values, and behind-the-scenes. According to a survey, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.
Job seekers increasingly use social media to gather information about businesses by looking at their social media profiles and reading reviews online. Home care providers must monitor their reputation as an employer since it directly impacts their hiring success.
So, a good social media presence and strong employer brand are essential for home care providers to steer the narrative and compel caregivers to apply for open roles.
3. Use social media advertising to reach candidates
Social media allows for targeted advertising that can help home care providers find their best-fit caregiver candidates.
These targeting features range from skills, experiences, and seniority levels to specific demographics such as location, interests, and more.
Therefore, you can segment your job postings for different personas, likely increasing the number of job applications you receive and the suitability of those applicants.
At the same time, social media allows you to reach your network organically and let them know you’re hiring, which can significantly cut hiring times and costs.
4. Get to know your candidates more
As part of your hiring process, you must run background checks and ask for references from caregiver candidates – especially since they will be working with vulnerable people.
You can understand a lot about a candidate through their social media. For example, on their LinkedIn profile, you can see recommendations from their peers, previous managers, colleagues, and their past experiences.
If they use Facebook, you can see the groups they joined and their post-sharing activity to quickly ensure they are not affiliated with anything that doesn’t align with your company’s core values.
It’s worth noting that while this type of pre-employment background check is still legal in all 50 states, this might not remain the case for much longer. State legislatures in Maryland, Michigan, California, and Illinois are currently working on bringing in new restrictions banning employers from requesting social media login details from candidates in the future.
5. Leverage social media groups or accounts to widen your reach
Some social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, have groups and profiles that act as job boards.
You can find and leverage such groups and accounts to reach out to more people who may not be looking for roles through more traditional channels.
Essentially, social media can help you widen your reach and access talent pools you may not find elsewhere.
6. Reach your employees’ network
If you have a positive employer brand and a great company culture, your employees will be your number-one fans on social media. They can help drive organic traffic to your posts and effectively increase applications to your job postings.
When you post a new role, make sure your employees are notified, so they can share it with their network.
Social media is also a great way to gain (and share) employee referrals, which usually bring in the most suitable, high-quality candidates. If you want your social media channels to succeed as part of a caregiver referral program, make sure you reward employees and caregivers who bring in those all-important applications.
7. Build a talent pool and brand advocates
Social media is a great tool for creating advocates who are ready to spread the word when you’re looking to hire. It helps businesses build a talent pool and reach top-quality candidates that already recognize the values and culture of their company.
It also provides an avenue for engagement with applicants to retain them throughout the recruitment and hiring processes. Building a virtual relationship and engagement with potential candidates in this way will show them what to expect from your caregiver experience, which may help to improve caregiver retention further down the line.
Sharing information about how to apply for open roles, what your hiring process entails, employee feedback, Q&A live sessions, and creative ‘day-in-the-life’ videos, are just some of the ways home care providers are using social media to increase candidate engagement and generate interest.
8. Direct applications to your careers page
Once you’ve got the attention of potential candidates, you must always use a specific call to action – which is to apply for the specified role.
Including a link to your careers page or the application form on your social media profile is essential to direct candidates to the right place.
Moreover, if you support your hiring process with a simplified application tool that helps caregivers automatically fill out their details, you’ll optimize candidate conversion rates. For example, Smartcare’s Engage Hiring Hub is designed to improve the applicant-to-hire ratio by making it easy for applicants to apply and turning them into employees with the click of a button.
9. Track and analyze caregiver hiring success
All strategies can consistently be improved by tracking and analyzing KPIs. Start by measuring the following metrics to track and improve your social media recruitment efforts:
Traffic
By tracking how many people arrive at your application pages via social media, you’ll understand if your content strategy is paying off.
Engagement
It’s important to track which type of content performs best to drive more applications consistently.
Conversion
Look at how many applications were completed and submitted directly via social media. This is the most important step to measure the success of your social media recruitment efforts.
Devices
You can optimize your content and application process by looking into which devices people use most often to view and submit their applications, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
How Smartcare Software can help
We built Smartcare Software to address home care providers’ most common challenges, including caregiver recruitment and hiring. Smartcare’s ENGAGE Hiring Hub is the industry’s first comprehensive applicant tracking system, specifically designed to address the unique challenges of hiring caregivers.
To learn more about how our tools can help you effectively attract, hire, and onboard top-talented caregivers, please contact us or request a free demo.
We are here to support you every step of the way.